Skunked: PIMCO April 2011 Outlook by Bill Gross

April 1, 2011 at 2:33 pmby

Bill Gross of PIMCO wrote this great article for April’s 2010 outlook.Gross explains how Congress is like Pepé Le Pew. This article was very popular and it was quoted on the Op-ed page in Today’s WSJ under Notable & Quotable. This article also really sums up my feeling about our current fiscal state, and the real issues that must be tackled. I provided a brief excerpt with a link at the bottom. It is an interesting and frightening read. I think the readers will enjoy, regardless of whether they agree with Mr. Gross or not.

That adorable skunk, Pepé Le Pew, is one of my wife Sue’s favorite cartoon characters. There’s something affable, even romantic about him as he seeks to woo his female companions with a French accent and promises of a skunk bungalow and bedrooms full of little Pepés in future years. It’s easy to love a skunk – but only on the silver screen, and if in real life – at a considerable distance. I think of Congress that way. Every two or six years, they dress up in full makeup, pretending to be the change, vowing to correct what hasn’t been corrected, promising discipline as opposed to profligate overspending and undertaxation, and striving to balance the budget when all others have failed. Oooh Pepé – Mon Chéri! But don’t believe them – hold your nose instead! Oh, I kid the Congress. Perhaps they don’t have black and white stripes with bushy tails. Perhaps there’s just a stink bomb that the Congressional sergeant-at-arms sets off every time they convene and the gavel falls to signify the beginning of the “people’s business.” Perhaps. But, in all cases, citizens of America – hold your noses. You ain’t smelled nothin’ yet.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security now account for 44% of total federal spending and are steadily rising.

Previous Congresses (and Administrations) have relied on the assumption that we can grow our way out of this onerous debt burden.

Unless entitlements are substantially reformed, the U.S. will likely default on its debt; not in conventional ways, but via inflation, currency devaluation and low to negative real interest rates.

I speak, of course, to the budget deficit and Washington’s inability to recognize the intractable: 75% of the budget is non-discretionary and entitlement based. Without attacking entitlements – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – we are smelling $1 trillion deficits as far as the nose can sniff. Once dominated by defense spending, these three categories now account for 44% of total Federal spending and are steadily rising. As Chart 1 points out, after defense and interest payments on the national debt are excluded, remaining discretionary expenses for education, infrastructure, agriculture and housing constitute at most 25% of the 2011 fiscal year federal spending budget of $4 trillion. You could eliminate it all and still wind up with a deficit of nearly $700 billion! So come on you stinkers; enough of the Pepé Le Pew romance and promises. Entitlement spending is where the money is and you need to reform it.